Young Earth or Old Earth?

The case from Scripture, the Church and science, in Robert Sungenis's books

Most Catholics today assume the question is closed: the universe is 13.7 billion years old and Genesis must be read around that number. Robert Sungenis argues it was never closed. He holds that the days of Genesis 1 are ordinary days and that the earth is thousands of years old, not billions, and he has made the case at length in his commentary on Genesis, in Scientific Heresies and in Galileo Was Wrong.

Here it is in ten short chapters. Each states the old-earth argument as he presents it, then gives his answer, in his own words where possible and always with the book it comes from.

Scripture

What Genesis says, and how its own numbers add up.

01

What "day" means in Genesis 1

The claim

The Hebrew word yom does not have to mean a 24-hour day. Scripture sometimes uses it for a long or indefinite period, so the six days could be ages.

Robert grants that yom has several meanings; it appears more than 2,000 times in Scripture. His point is that Genesis 1 does not leave the meaning open. Each day is singular, numbered in order from the first to the sixth, and he notes that a day with an ordinal number is never read as a long period anywhere in Hebrew.

The strongest evidence, in his view, is the refrain that closes each day: "and there was evening and there was morning". It occurs six times in Genesis 1 and fewer than a dozen times in all of Scripture, and it always marks one day. Had Moses meant ages, Hebrew offered him other words. He used none of them.

“There is no instance in Hebrew grammar in which “day” preceded by an ordinal number is understood figuratively or as a long period of time.”

“But the writer of Genesis 1 chose none of these possibilities; rather, he chose the most specific phrase for a 24-hour day that one can find in the Hebrew Scriptures.”

Questions on the six days of creation
eveningmorning1st dayGn 1:5eveningmorning2nd dayGn 1:8eveningmorning3rd dayGn 1:13eveningmorning4th dayGn 1:19eveningmorning5th dayGn 1:23eveningmorning6th dayGn 1:31yom: over 2,000 uses, several meaningsyomim (days): 702 uses, always literal days"evening and morning": under a dozen uses, always one day

02

The genealogies add up to thousands of years

The claim

The genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 have gaps, so they cannot be added up, and Scripture gives no date for creation.

Robert answers that the Hebrew word for "begot", yalad, is very hard to read as anything but father and son. Adding the ages in the Masoretic text back from the division of the monarchy, he places the Flood in 2529 BC and the creation of Adam in 4185 BC.

The ancient versions differ, but not by much. The Samaritan text gives 4265 BC and the Septuagint 5290 BC, and he points out that the Septuagint figures would have Methuselah alive ten years after the Flood, though only eight people were on the ark. The Church Fathers who worked out a date placed Adam between about 5000 and 5700 BC. Every reckoning lands a few thousand years ago.

“However, it is very difficult to prove that the Hebrew word for “begot,” dly (yalad), can refer to anything other than a father/son relationship.”

“Of the Catholic Church Fathers, few ventured into the area of biblical chronology, but those who did have dates that congregate rather closely around 5000 to 5700 for the date of Adam.”

Questions on creation and Genesis
Church Fathersc. 5700-5000 BC5500 BC4500 BC3500 BC2500 BCSeptuagint 5290 BCSamaritan 4265 BCMasoretic 4185 BCUssher 4004 BCThe Flood2529 BCDates for Adam; the Flood on the Masoretic figures

The Church

How the Fathers read the days, and what Rome did and did not decide.

03

How the Fathers read the days

The claim

The Fathers did not agree on the days of creation, and Augustine in particular read them figuratively, which leaves room for long ages.

Robert counts about two dozen Fathers who wrote down their view of creation. All of them, he says, took the days literally, and many east and west specify twenty-four hours: Basil and Ambrose among them. The medievals kept the same reading, from Peter Lombard and Hugh of St. Victor to Nicholas of Lyra and St. Lorenzo of Brindisi.

Augustine is the exception people cite. Robert's answer is that Augustine's alternative was an instantaneous creation, everything made in a single moment; that it rested on his reading of Sirach 18:1 and his lack of Hebrew and Greek; and that Augustine himself held it with reserve, while his earlier reading took the days literally. The choice the Fathers left was six days or one instant. None of them proposed billions of years.

“They all state, including Augustine’s prior view, that the days of Genesis 1 were to be interpreted in their literal sense. Many of the Fathers, both east and west, even specify a “24-hour period.””

“As we have seen, it is a fact the Church Fathers, in absolute consensus, believed in short-ages, not long-ages of billions of years.”

IrenaeusHippolytusLactantiusAthanasiusBasilAmbroseChrysostomAugustineHugh of St. VictorPeter LombardNicholas of LyraLorenzo of BrindisiAD 200AD 600AD 1000AD 1400read the days literallyAugustine's alternative: one instant

04

What the 1909 Biblical Commission decided

The claim

In 1909 the Pontifical Biblical Commission allowed Catholics to read "day" as a long period, so the Church has left the age of the earth open.

Robert reads the Commission's reply narrowly. Asked whether "day" could be taken as a natural day or as "a certain space of time", and whether exegetes could freely disagree about it, the Commission answered yes. That, he says, settled a legal question: an exegete who reads the days as periods is not liable to censure. It did not say that reading is correct, or even the better one.

Nor did it say anything about the refrain "evening and morning", or about millions or billions of years. He calls the reply a stop-gap that defers the meaning of the word to a future decision of the Church, while the tradition of the Fathers remains the Church's reading in the meantime.

“But this doesn’t mean, of course, that a non-24-hour interpretation is correct or even the best interpretation of the text. It only means that someone will not be canonically liable if he decides against a 24-hour interpretation.”

“We also know the 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commission said that exegetes could interpret the word “day” as “twenty-four hours” or “a certain period of time,” but the Commission never said or implied the “period” could extend for billions of years.”

Settled in 1909

An exegete may read "day" as a period of time without being censured for it.

Not settled

That the period reading is correct, or the better one

That "evening and morning" is figurative

Anything about millions or billions of years

Theology

Why the order of death and sin matters.

05

Death before the Fall

The claim

Animals were always predators and died long before Adam; even Augustine suggested they died natural deaths before the Fall.

Robert starts from what Scripture states plainly: before the Fall there was no death, at least for Adam and Eve. He reasons that if there was no death among the animals either, there could be no carnivores, and that during the six days every creature ate plants. Scripture, he adds, does not count eating a plant as a death, since only creatures with "the breath of life" are said to live.

He presents the rest as a reasonable reading, not a dogma. The curse on the serpent changed its body, and the serpent was cursed "more than" the beasts, so the beasts too could have been changed. He reports Augustine's suggestion about natural animal death as one of the questions that should make any interpreter careful. What the Church does teach, he stresses, is that physical death came from the first sin, not from an evolutionary cycle of life and death.

“Before the Fall of man, Scripture is clear that there was no death, at least for the small human community of Adam and Eve. Logically, if there was no death in the animal kingdom, then there could not have been any carnivores before the Fall.”

“Moreover, in the doctrine of Original Sin, the Church teaches that physical death is a result of the first sin, not the result of an evolutionary life-death cycle seeking higher forms of species.”

Before the Fall

No death, at least for Adam and Eve.

Every creature eats plants; Scripture does not count that as death.

After the first sin

Physical death enters the world as its result.

The serpent is changed by the curse; the beasts, cursed less, may have changed too.

Science

The dating methods and the cosmology behind "billions of years".

06

Radiometric dating rests on assumptions

The claim

Radioactive isotopes decay at fixed, measurable rates, so the balance of parent and daughter atoms in a rock gives its age, and the ages come out in millions and billions of years.

Robert's answer, argued against G. Brent Dalrymple of the U.S. Geological Survey, is that the decay equation cannot give an age without knowing things nobody measured: how much of the daughter element was in the rock when it formed, whether anything was added or washed out since, and whether the decay rate has held constant the whole time. Change the first assumption alone and the same rock gives a very different age. The clock below lets you try it.

He also points to rocks whose age is known. Lava from an 1801 eruption in Hawaii, about 153 years old when tested, gave potassium-argon ages of 160 million to 3 billion years.

“But whether the system is, indeed, closed to parent and daughter isotopes over millions of years is the question that Dalrymple cannot answer since he does not know what happened in the past.”

“Obviously, if a percentage of the Lead existed when the rock was created rather than to the decay of Uranium, then the age of the rock will be much less than if all the Lead in the rock was due to Uranium decay.”

  • Parent atoms still in the rock: 40
  • Daughter atoms produced by decay
  • Daughter atoms that were there from the start

Calculated age of the same rock

5.95 billion years

The atoms in the rock never change. Only the starting assumption does, and it moves the age from 5.95 billion years to zero. Half-life used: uranium-238, 4.5 billion years, the figure given in CASB 4.

A rock of known age

Hawaiian lava from 1801, when tested

about 153 years

Its potassium-argon ages

160 million to 3 billion years

07

Carbon-14 where there should be none

The claim

Carbon-14 only reaches back about 50,000 years, so its presence in samples said to be millions of years old must be contamination.

Carbon-14 halves every 5,730 years. Robert's point is simple arithmetic: if the earth were billions of years old, remains of creatures that died millions of years ago should hold none of it. Yet they do, and he says the amounts found in dinosaur bones and other fossils fit a world much less than 10,000 years old.

He cites soft-tissue tests on dinosaur specimens that always came out under 50,000 years, against a claimed 70 million, and other bone tests between 15,000 and 30,000 years. When his team asked to test a Tyrannosaurus bone themselves, the request was refused.

“Since that is the case, then if the earth is billions of years old, the organic remains of organisms that died millions of years ago should no longer contain any Carbon 14.”

“In fact, the amount of Carbon 14 found in dinosaur bones, and the remains of other kinds of plants and animals, is consistent with the biblical age of the world of much less than 10,000 years.”

bones: 15,000-30,000soft tissue: under 50,000020,00040,00060,000years since deathallnonehalf at 5,730claimed age: 70 million years, far off this chart

08

Rock layers can form in days

The claim

Rock layers settled one on top of another at today's slow rates, so each layer is older than the one above it and the column records millions of years.

Robert relies on the flume experiments of the French geologist Guy Berthault. In moving water, mixed sediment sorts itself by particle size into distinct layers, side by side, however fast it is laid down. The layers record the current, not the passing of ages. In 1965 the geologist Edwin McKee measured a Colorado flood that laid down twelve feet of sorted, bedded layers in forty-eight hours.

Applied to the Tonto Group of the Grand Canyon, sandstone, clay and limestone said to span the 70 million years of the Cambrian, the same principles allow the whole sequence to form in as little as days or weeks. He adds that whole trees stand through several layers of the column, which could not happen if each layer took ages to settle.

“The stratified deposits, which reached a thickness of twelve feet in forty-eight hours, showed particle sorting and bedding planes.”

“Obviously, if the above data from Austin and Berthault is correct, it would categorically deny such a long time period to the Tonto Group. In fact, the experiments show the Tonto group could have been formed in as little as days or weeks.”

Textbook age of these layers
70 million years
In moving water
as little as days
The grains sort themselves by size as they settle, coarse at the bottom and fine at the top. Illustration after Berthault's flume experiments and the Tonto Group of the Grand Canyon.

09

Light from distant stars

The claim

Stars are millions or billions of light years away, so their light must have been travelling for millions or billions of years.

Robert's first answer is theological: a God who made the stars in an instant could bring their light to earth in an instant. His second is physical. On the Fourth Day, he proposes, the stars were set in the firmament within about 16 billion miles of the earth, a distance light covers in 24 hours, and the firmament was then stretched out, carrying them to their present distances.

He also questions the premise. The speed of light is a postulate of relativity, measured near the earth, not a proven constant across the universe, and he notes that scientists still disagree about what light is. His own model holds that in a universe rotating around a fixed earth, light moves far faster in deep space. That answer depends on the geocentric cosmology he defends in Galileo Was Wrong, and the page states it as his view.

“It would certainly be illogical to argue, on the one hand, that God created the stars instantaneously, but then argue, on the other hand, that He could not perform a creative miracle and allow their light to stretch instantaneously to the Earth.”

“Within the distance of 16 billion miles, the light from the stars travels to Earth in a period of 24 hours or less. As such, we have satisfied the objection concerning how starlight could appear on Earth on the Fourth Day of creation.”

EarthDay 4: stars within 16 billion milestheir light reaches Earth within 24 hoursthen the firmament is stretched outcarrying the stars outward

10

The Big Bang does not measure the age of the universe

The claim

The Big Bang dates the universe to about 13.7 billion years, and satellite measurements have confirmed the figure.

Robert's objection is that the 13.7 billion years goes into the calculation rather than coming out of it. The formula that turns a galaxy's redshift into an age starts from the age of the universe. Start from 13.7 billion and an object at redshift 1 dates to about 4.8 billion years; start from 6,000 years and the same object dates to 2,121.

He adds that the theory holds together only with ingredients no one has seen, dark matter and a dark energy said to make up about 73 percent of the universe, and an inflation that, in his words, amounts to instantaneous creation. He notes that no modern pope made long ages Catholic doctrine, and he warns Catholics against tying Genesis to the Big Bang.

“let's say we assume t0 is 6,000 years instead of 13.7 billion. In this case, where z = 1 then t = 2,121 years.”

“Essentially, whether they know it or will admit it, Big Bang proponents have invoked instantaneous creation, similar to that described in Genesis, to answer the anomalies of their theory.”

Start the formula at 13.7 billion yearsnowabout 4.8 billionz = 12.6 billionz = 2Start the formula at 6,000 yearsnow2,121z = 11,154z = 2Same object, same formula; only the starting age differs.

The books quoted here

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